Financial, Government & Corporate Corruption & Cronyism

I Taw Handcuffs!

Attorney General Chris Koster today announced that the state of Missouri and Lorraine Brown, former President of DocX, LLC, have reached a plea agreement. Under the agreement, Ms. Brown will plead guilty to one felony count of forgery, one felony count of perjury, and one misdemeanor count of making a false declaration.

Brown will be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not less than two years and not to exceed three years in the Missouri Department of Corrections.

Ms. Brown is the former President of the company DocX, LLC. During the period of March to October 2009, DocX, at the direction of Brown, instituted a surrogate signing policy whereby employees signed, not their name, but the names of other employees on thousands of mortgage documents that were notarized and filed across the country. Prior to 2009, similar signing practices were also employed at DocX. Brown concealed these practices from her clients, the national mortgage servicers, and the parent company of DocX. The practices of DocX were brought to national attention by a “60 Minutes” report and resulted in several major lenders temporarily suspending foreclosures in 2010.

The guilty plea of Lorraine Brown, 56, of Alpharetta, Ga., was announced by Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida Robert E. O’Neill; and Michael Steinbach, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Jacksonville Field Office.

The plea, to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, was entered before U.S. Magistrate Judge Monte C. Richardson in Jacksonville federal court. Brown faces a maximum potential penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, or twice the gross gain or loss from the crime. The date for sentencing has not yet been set.

“Lorraine Brown participated in a scheme to fabricate mortgage-related documents at the height of the financial crisis,” said Assistant Attorney General Breuer. “She was responsible for more than a million fraudulent documents entering the system, directing company employees to forge and falsify documents relied on by property recorders, title insurers and others. Appropriately, she now faces the prospect of prison time.”

Ah, look what showed up…

So now about all those destroyed chains of title and alleged “mortgage trusts” that actually have no mortgages in them….